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Access to Justice

We work to improve access to justice, with a particular focus on ensuring that low-income individuals have the tools they need to solve problems.

Poverty Justice Solutions helps provide lawyers for low-income New Yorkers in Housing Court. Legal Hand trains community volunteers to offer their neighbors free access to legal information. Our community justice centers work to render the justice system more transparent and responsive, actively engaging residents, merchants, and others in the process of doing justice.We work to improve the cultural responsiveness of courts in domestic violence cases and assist parents in child support cases. And our research department documents the legal needs of specific neighborhoods and produces recommendations for streamlining cumbersome legal processes, such as the payment of bail.

Publications & Digital Media

This report documents the bail payment process in New York City courts and correctional facilities and provides 17 recommendations to improve practices. Based on these recommendations, the city is implementing a number of solutions detailedhere.

On our 'New Thinking' podcast, Nashville's top public defender Dawn Deaner explains why she thinks public defending has been "set up to fail" and how working to engage the community—both those who need public defenders and those who never will—is a lifeline for a profession in crisis.

As part of our series on prosecutor power, Scott Hechinger of Brooklyn Defender Services offers a view from the other side of the adversarial process, discussing prosecutors' impact at key decision-points in his clients' cases and weighing the prospects for reform in a time of increasing scrutiny of prosecutorial discretion.

We work with reformers around the world.

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This website is funded in whole or in part through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor any of its components operate, control, are responsible for, or necessarily endorse, this website (including, without limitation, its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided).